Divorce Rates Have Dropped Since Obamacare

See one possible explanation for the decrease

Before the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—a.k.a. Obamacare—was in place, the rules for Medicaid eligibility varied by state. Many states had “maximum asset level” requirements, which made things tricky for older married couples: If one spouse suffered a serious, expensive illness, the couple would have to spend their joint savings so that the sick spouse could fall below the maximum level required to qualify for Medicaid. But this option doesn’t leave any retirement funds for the healthy spouse, which is why some couples had no choice but to turn to “medical divorce” in order to separate their assets.

But when Medicaid expanded under the ACA, states removed their asset tests. So economists from the University of Kansas were curious to see if couples who would’ve otherwise gotten divorced in the name of Medicaid stayed together under the new expansion. They examined divorce rates between 2000 and 2015 for couples between the ages of 50 and 64—when they were likely to be married for a long time, have “substantial assets,” and be eligible for the Medicaid expansion—in all states except for the 10 that didn’t elect to expand Medicaid. The results: In 2014 and ’15, after the ACA came in to effect, the states that expanded Medicaid had a lower divorce rate than those that didn’t. In fact, the economists found a 5.6 percent drop in divorce rates among people between 50 and 64 years old.

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